Webloggin » Women: Pass The Nuts

“Women: can’t live with them; pass the beer nuts” - Norm Peterson, Cheers

1. Cindy Sheehan

What is most striking about mentally-ill anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan’s retreat from the public square is that she seems surprised about something I’ve been saying for some time now: it’s about the ‘who’, not the ‘what’. The anti-war Left are really anti-Bush first, anti-Republican and anti-conservative second and then maybe, time permitting, anti-war.

Sheehan, just days ago, produced a blog denouncing the Democratic Party and calling for her supporters to do the same. The anti-war activist thought the cause would be better served by turning on the Democrats who have, at some point, turned their backs on them. She now knows the truth:

“The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.””

I recently wrote that true anti-war voters would not be supporting a Hillary or Edwards campaign - after all, their 2002 vote to authorize military action against Saddam Hussein has contributed more than most people to the anti-war nightmare that now consumes us all. Sheehan, for all of her faults, seems resistant to embracing the pandering of self-serving politicians. For this, she has been, according to her, “trashed” for her position by those who (in a sane world) would otherwise be rallying behind her.

It wasn’t long ago that Sheehan was considering a run for Congress herself. Now she is selling her Crawford ranch and trying to salvage what’s left of her finances and family. But is her assessment of the AWFUL’s (Anti-War Fanatical Ultra-Leftists) really so eye-opening?:

“I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.”

Of course there is an element of egotism in believing that you can save the world by chanting, wearing costumes, putting on puppet shows, invoking Hitler, being really obnoxious in microphones and bull horns etc. etc. You fool yourself into believing that you are bigger than you really are. While you’re having sit-in’s, vandalizing evil capitalist establishments, blocking traffic, creating Bush conspiracies out of thin air and praying for a Country Joe & the Fish revival, there are real people out there enlisting in the military, joining the legal profession, working for political campaigns and running for office.

Cindy Sheehan was an advertisement for nuttiness and now the promotion is over. Her hope now is to retain what’s left of her dignity and find herself again. If she is interested at all in redeeming herself, she could lend support to the thousands in Venezuela who are standing up to her buddy Hugo Chavez, who it seems safe to say now is an official dictator.

And I’m sure the Left will be right there with her, championing freedom…

2. Hillary Clinton

Newsvine darling Killfile recently Seeded an article ‘exposing’ the tensions between Rudy Giuliani, his ex-wife and their son. That in itself isn’t noteworthy, but the headline painted a picture of this domestic drama as somehow relevant to “GOP family values”, even though the article itself in no way was meant to be a critique of broader ideologies.

I guess that the problem with conservatives is that they dare set standards that some may not live up to. Compare that with the Democrats who set no standards and we’re left with this question: Which is worse - unintentional hypocrisy or deliberate and muddled ambivalence?

Okay, so Rudy had a nasty divorce and a strained family life. Yet, his front-runner counterpart on the other side of the aisle is not exactly a beacon of family values herself. Hillary Clinton’s baggage is that she has a career built on the success of a philandering, adulterous husband. Sure, there is no official court document displaying the failures in her marriage and private life and yes, when she meets up with Bill for a public event, they do sit together.

What I’ve wondered for years is “where are the feminists?” If they weren’t silent during Bill’s escapades that almost brought down a presidency then they were making excuses for him. Feminism, as I’ve seen it described, is about women’s equality, independence and individualism. Yet here we have a powerful woman married to a man accused of rape, sexual harassment, adultery and lying. Lying to her. No separation. No divorce.

We can argue about how much Bill Clinton has screwed the nation through his actions and subsequent cover-ups. But is there any doubt that he screwed Hillary most of all?

Couple that with current reports and rumors of sex-addicts counseling, affairs and Hillary’s efforts to contain her husband and we should start to wonder - is Rudy Giuliani’s divorce really that juicy? If the family-values segment of the Right is hypocritical in ignoring or downplaying Rudy’s faults, then isn’t the feminist segment of the Left just as hypocritical in ignoring or downplaying Hillary’s faults?

Hillary Clinton’s marriage is just as neurotic and sleazy as it ever was. At least Rudy has moved on.

Others: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air

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